


lift yourself from what’s below

by pyrophane



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Dubiously Consensual Organ Touching, M/M, Magical Realism, Mild Gore, in which reiji semi-literally holds shun's heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9475709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: “Don’t,” Shun growls, warningly, but his voice is driftwood-brittle, crackling with tension, and they both know the threat is an empty one. After all, it’s Shun’s blood slicking Reiji’s palms and Shun’s heart shuddering within the cage of Reiji’s fingers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> alternative summary courtesy of [andrea](https://twitter.com/kaoruindous/status/824775694420840448):  
> 
> 
> set shortly after shun and reiji become allies. this contains all the usual questionable power dynamics to be expected from s1 hostageshipping, plus some light gore and shun generally having a bad time. as usual, i blame/thank ygo tl for enabling ❤️
> 
> title from 'propane nightmares' by pendulum.

 

 

 

 

 

“Give me your heart,” Reiji says.

Shun freezes, then throws his weight forward, right hand flying to his left arm. “What?”

“It’s a reasonable request,” Reiji says. He stands up, walks around the edge of his desk so that there isn’t anything between them, and spreads his hands. “How do I know that you won’t betray me the moment my back is turned? I need a way of ensuring you don’t spiral out of control and lash out at LDS, for everyone’s safety. Otherwise, our deal is off.”

“How do you—how do you even _know_ about—”

Reiji cuts him off with a dismissive wave. “I have ways of gathering information.”

Heartland had been aptly named; its residents had the ability to detach their hearts, or at least metaphysical representations of their hearts. From what Reiji had pieced together out of the files he’d stolen from his father it seemed to be customary to display your heart as a sign of trust: loved ones would touch each other’s hearts, an exchange of hearts was the most intimate ritual possible.

“In the first wave of the invasion,” Shun says, tight and furious, always with that same undercurrent of grief he can’t quite excise out of his voice whenever he talks about his homeland, “they tore our hearts out before turning us into cards. Who knows why they stopped, it’s not like those bastards gave a fuck about—”

“Nobody will be carding anybody here,” Reiji says, touching his glasses. “Your heart will be kept safe—you have my word. I don’t make a habit out of rendering assets useless.”

For the space of two-and-a-half breaths Reiji is certain that Shun will try to punch him. Then Shun lets his arms fall. “Fine,” Shun says. “Fine.” He curls his fingers into his coat.

“Well?” Reiji says. “Do you need me to take it out of you?”

“Shut up,” Shun snarls. He grits his teeth, glances away from Reiji, and shoves his hand into his chest, angling upwards from between two ribs. There’s a brief flare of light and then Shun’s cradling his heart in his hands, a raw, pulsating mass of reddish flesh balanced between his palms. For a metaphysical representation it looks identical to the real thing, the neatly-formed chambers, the vessel walls truncated cleanly, just like the diagrams in the medical textbooks Reiji read in Japanese and then in English as a child. Reiji’s gaze lifts to Shun’s neck; idly, he wonders if Shun still has a pulse.

Shun narrows his eyes and carefully slides his heart into Reiji’s waiting hands, snatching his fingers away as soon as Reiji’s grip is secure. Almost immediately it begins oozing blood, as though a thousand tiny cuts have shredded themselves open. Reiji eyes this with mild interest. The organ is warm and slippery in his palms; Reiji presses down on the aorta with the pad of his thumb, experimental, feeling for the soft resistance of tissue. Shun flinches.

“Don’t,” Shun growls, warningly, but his voice is driftwood-brittle, crackling with tension, and they both know the threat is an empty one. After all, it’s Shun’s blood slicking Reiji's palms and Shun’s heart shuddering within the cage of Reiji's fingers.

“I believe it was a Heartland tradition to allow others to touch your heart as a demonstration of trust. You cannot lie to me while I’m holding your heart,” says Reiji. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” says Shun. Horror flashes across his face, capsizes itself just as quickly.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Reiji. “I trust that you’ve been as transparent as possible with me about everything you know, in order to benefit our shared goal.”

It isn’t a question, and Shun doesn’t reply, jaw going taut instead. Reiji smiles. On closer inspection Shun’s heart isn’t quite as diagrammatically perfect as he’d initially thought. There are scarred-over nicks along the underside of the left ventricle, invisible but to the touch, arterial damage, slight watercolour smudges of discolouration.

“You haven’t been taking very good care of your heart,” Reiji says, drawing a finger up along the join between the left and right ventricles, which earns him a half-suppressed shudder and a sharp inhale. Septum, he thinks, and the page with the labelled, sliced-open heart from his childhood medical textbook presents itself to him again. Enclosure. Something cornered, confined. “It’s bruised.”

“You’re holding it too tightly,” Shun hisses. His knuckles strain a bloodless white under his skin, stark against the dark fabric of his coat.

“Because it’s bleeding all over my hands, and I don’t think you’d be too happy if I dropped it. Do all hearts bleed like this?” Reiji asks. He traces his fingers further across, mapping the muscle out with careful, clinical precision: superior vena cava, right pulmonary vein, right atrium.

Shun snaps his mouth shut but the answer is dragged syllable by syllable out of his throat regardless, an anchor hauled up from the depths. When he speaks his voice is shaking. “No. It didn’t when Y—” He bites off the rest of the sentence, the effort sending tremors shimmering down the column of his neck and through his shoulders. “Stop asking useless questions! Why do you need to know all of this?”

Reiji hums. “I don’t,” he says. “I thought you might appreciate the opportunity for conversation. Will it keep bleeding when I put it down?”

A baleful glare. “ _No._ Are we done here?”

“You’re free to leave at any time,” Reiji says.

Shun doesn’t deign this with an answer, only casting one last violently hungry glance at his heart before whirling around and storming out of the study. Once the doors crash shut behind him, Reiji sets the heart down on his desk, where, as expected, the bleeding stops.

The blood on his hands is starting to dry in dark, tacky smears like ink. For a moment he’s eight again in his absent father’s study before he’d made it his own, textbooks strewn all over the desk, thinking about cross-sections, categorisations, incisions down the centre. Cutting something apart in order to put it to use. Shun’s heart contracts as though in momentary recognition; it is, in the end, a sacrifice they have both weighed and found themselves willing to make. Reiji stands up to rinse his hands clean.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to drop by my [tumblr](http://delineative.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/ennezahard)! this fic can be found on tumblr [here](http://delineative.tumblr.com/post/156439452605/fic-lift-yourself-from-whats-below).


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